Echoes Of Treason

Even as the Amadike raged in the palace, unaware of how dangerously close his kingdom teetered on the edge, a far more sinister shadow had begun to stretch across Amaaku. The darkness, once dismissed as an unusual phenomenon, had now swallowed the land in a cloak of dread and despair. The very air had grown stale, thick with the stench of something unseen—something dying.

Death had taken residence in Amaaku.

Trading had halted. Farming ceased. Markets stood silent, their stalls abandoned. People no longer gathered to gossip under mango trees or meet at village squares. Instead, they barricaded their doors, whispered prayers to indifferent gods, and peered nervously through cracks in their huts.

Even the livestock had changed. Goats refused to graze. Chickens stayed in their coops. The birds that once filled the trees with morning songs now hid in hushed silence. The kingdom had grown still.

Ichie Ude, lord of the Achara clan, sat on a polished wooden stool in his ornate obi, gnashing his teeth and sipping bitter palm wine from a wide calabash.

"This is taking too long," he muttered, not for the first time. "This was not what I was promised."

His hands trembled as he gripped the wine gourd. Frustration rippled through him like heat.

"Not after what I've sacrificed."

Amaaku was a united kingdom in name only. Beneath its majestic surface lay six powerful clans—Dike, Achara, Olaedo, Akudo, Elekwauwa, and Atani. Though ruled by one king, each clan was practically autonomous, with its own dialects, warriors, customs, and power structures.

Tradition, as decreed by the gods long ago, reserved the royal throne exclusively for the Dike clan. And while most clans had long accepted this sacred decree, Achara never had. Generations of rivalry, bitterness, and blood fueled their ambition.

And now, Ichie Ude—the wealthiest and most politically connected elder of Achara—nursed those ambitions like a festering wound. His presence on Amadike's council of elders was a formality. His true loyalty lay with his own destiny.

But that destiny had always seemed out of reach… until the visit.

He shuddered. Even now, the memory of that night made his spine tighten.

It had happened several moons ago—a night when the moon sat fat and heavy in the sky. He had been seated right where he was now, enjoying the breeze, the laughter of his children, and the sweet wine that made his tongue loosen in song. He remembered watching Chidi, his youngest son, pin down Chude, his older brother, in a wrestling contest beneath the torchlight. He had laughed with pride. Chidi would grow into a champion.

Then… everything changed.

First, came the silence.

Thick. Wrong. Absolute.

The night sounds vanished—as though the world had inhaled and refused to exhale.

Then, a wailing roar erupted. It was neither human nor animal. It was as if the very earth had opened its throat to scream.

His children kept playing—unaware, untouched by the supernatural shift. Ichie Ude knew instantly: the encounter was for him alone.

And then it came.

The beast.

It rose from the center of his compound, first as smoke, spiraling upward in coils. It twisted from the ground, as if unscrewing itself from the bowels of the underworld. A massive head burst forth, steam billowing from its flared nostrils. Then shoulders. Arms. Hind legs that tore through the red earth as it clawed its way into the world.

Its skin looked like burning obsidian, slick and reflective, pulsating with something alive. Its body became solid as it emerged—gigantic, hideous, steaming with decay.

Ichie Ude's knees buckled. His wrapper grew warm and wet with hot urine. He dared not move.

The earth cracked. A gaping hole opened where the beast had emerged, blacker than the moonless sky. Red sand crumbled into the void.

The creature hovered, its eyes glowing crimson, unblinking, and full of judgment.

Then, as though conjured by a darker will, two women floated up from the chasm.

They wore robes that seemed to drink in the light. Their hair was woven with bones and black feathers, their eyes gleamed like sharpened glass. One was older, her face creased with time but her posture powerful. The other was younger, with cruel beauty etched into every line of her face.

The older woman stepped forward, her voice sharp and smooth like a dagger wrapped in silk.

"Well met, Ichie Ude. Ekene m. I greet you."

The great Chief Ude let out a deafening fart and fell to the earth in a dead faint